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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23489968">Ghost Stories</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/malhagie/pseuds/malhagie'>malhagie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>No Fandom, Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ghost Stories, Prompt Fill</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 09:15:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,162</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23489968</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/malhagie/pseuds/malhagie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt:<br/>A child moves into a new house and finds out that the other kids in town think it’s haunted. She begins to invent ghost stories to tell at school in order to get attention. But the more stories she tell, the more frightened she becomes of the house…</p><p>"Miriam looked up at the large, old house. The roof was gray and the siding used to be white, but had also become grey. It was two stories tall with a full attic. From the northeast corner of the house the three-story circular tower rose. Its cone shaped roof reached up into the clear sky. Miriam’s mother and brother moved past her and climbed onto the porch. She soon followed."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Ghost Stories</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For my English 300 short story class</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p>
<p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Miriam looked up at the large, old house. The roof was gray and the siding used to be white, but had also become grey. It was two stories tall with a full attic. From the northeast corner of the house the three-story circular tower rose. Its cone shaped roof reached up into the clear sky. Miriam’s mother and brother moved past her and climbed onto the porch. She soon followed.</p><p>The house felt smaller on the inside. It was a massive house, but it was cramped. There were so many rooms and so many walls that it felt like a maze. Miriam climbed up to the highest point in the tower on the creaking wooden staircase. She stared out the tiny window in the roof. She could see the tops of trees and the brown and grey roofs of other houses. Her brother soon joined her.</p><p>“I like this house,” he said. He came up to stand next to her to look out the window, “It’s so big.”</p><p>“I think it might be too big,” Miriam mumbled, “It’s pretty old too.”</p><p>“Have you chosen your bedroom yet?” Zachary asked.</p><p>“No,” she turned and walked back down the staircase.</p><p>Her mother and brother had already claimed the two biggest rooms in the house. Miriam chose the bedroom closest to the tower. She went to bed that night listening to the house creak and moan in the breeze.</p><p>The school Miriam and her brother started at a week later was small. Miriam was disappointed. Half the people in her home room showed up in her next class. By lunch time she had already seen most of the people in her grade.</p><p>She walked through the center of the cafeteria, her tray heavy with unappetizing food. Zachary waved at her, he sat sandwiched between people at a crowded table. She frowned back at him. His expression crinkled and he motioned vaguely to the space behind him. Miriam walked over to him. The girls sitting at the table behind him smiled when she approached and made room for her.</p><p>Miriam sat down with the girls. She recognized several of them. She smiled in what she hoped was a pleasant way, waiting for someone else to start the conversation. One girl finally asked where Miriam is from: one state over. Why she moved: her mother got a new job. Where do you live now?</p><p>Miriam struggled to describe the location of her house, but once she mentioned the tower on the house, the girls lit up with excitement.</p><p>“The tower house?” a girl with frizzy red hair asked, “You live there?”</p><p>Miriam nodded along, afraid she had said something wrong.</p><p>“You know it’s haunted right?” a girl with long brown hair asked.</p><p>“I haven’t seen any ghosts,” Miriam shrugged.</p><p>The brown-haired girl cocked her head to the side and attempted to raise her eyebrow. Buoyed by the attention, Miriam’s confidence soared to a new height.</p><p>She began, “Well, these last few nights I have been hearing strange noises…”</p><p>As Miriam wove her tale about hearing a ghost wailing in the night she discovered something: people loved ghost stories. Even the skeptical ones, who agreed that it was probably a neighbor’s dog, sat in rapt attention as Miriam told her story.</p><p>Miriam ate up the attention. The girls, her new friends, giggled and whispered about the enticing story. In her next class Miriam told a more interesting version of it again, and then again in the next class.  By the time school started the next day Miriam and Zachary already had a reputation. They basked in the glow of their classmates’ attention.</p><p>One day before school Zachary pulled her aside.</p><p>“He told her not to go overboard with the ghost stories, okay?” he said with his scheming smile.</p><p>Miriam nodded.</p><p>Their mother installed a new rule last night: no house guests until they were completely unpacked. It didn’t upset him, but it upset Miriam’s new friends. They wanted to sleep over and try to spot the ghost cat. Miriam learned at lunch that Zachary had decided the ghost was a cat.</p><p>To the disappointment of her friends Miriam could not come up with another story. She could only think of so many ways to make the creaking noises of the old house sound scary.</p><p>Their classmate’s excitement in their haunted house waned. Miriam found herself sitting with less and less people at lunch. Zachary and Miriam lost their new kid shine and assimilated to the school. Miriam soon finds that she is as boring and unpopular at her new school as she was at her old school.</p><p>That morning, like a light at the end of the tunnel, or a stretch limo pulling into a bus parking spot on prom night, her mother lifted the no house guests rule.</p><p>Night fell and Miriam got to work. She browsed the internet, walked through the house, and climbed up the small spiral staircase to the top of the tower. She gazed out at the tops of the trees as their black leaves dancing against the blue sky. Excitement pooled in Miriam’s stomach as she made her plans. A big sleep over, in a creepy house; she was sure she would make some friends.</p><p>Miriam woke up with her heart pounding. She didn’t remember falling asleep and was disoriented after she finds herself in the tower. Something had woken her up. She looked out the window, and a warbling wailing fills the silence between the rushing of the wind. Her heart leapt in her chest, she was wide awake. She paused for a few moments, listening for another sound. She heard nothing, so she continued back down stairs.</p><p>She curled up in her bed, and was moments away from sleep when another wail floated through the house. She took a deep breath and stayed very still.</p><p>A second, quieter wail, sounded a few moments later. It sounded more like an animal this time. Miriam’s skin grew cold as it faded into silence. Miriam took a deep breath and changed positions. It probably was a stray cat, everything seemed scarier in the dark. She closed her eyes and another loud moan sounded. Miriam jumped out of bed, beyond scared and straight into angry.</p><p>The next moan she heard she identified. Zachary was moving something bulky up the stairs. She waits until he is near her room before she lays her hand on his shoulder.</p><p>“Fuck!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, jumping back.</p><p>“Shh…You don’t want to wake Mom,” Miriam whispered.</p><p>“Fuck you, I thought you were the ghost,” Zachary mumbled and continued to drag his large box to his room.</p><p>“There is no ghost,” Miriam said and shut her door.</p><p>Zachary mumbled something back, but Miriam couldn’t hear it through the door.</p><p>During Monday morning she prepared the story she would weave at lunch. Before she even sat down rumors started to spread. She sat down at her usual spot in the cafeteria and is suddenly surrounded by other people.</p><p>“Did you see a ghost? In English Zachary said he saw a ghost, and that you saw it too…” They looked at her with big expectant eyes.</p><p>Miriam took a deep breath and began to weave her tale. It was about how she was taking a nap in the tower and was woken by the ghost. She hardly had to try, her brother had been talkative, and the girls she talked too had already filled in a lot of it in their heads.</p><p>Miriam spent the next few days preparing for her giant sleepover. She moved boxes out of a spare bedroom and washed years worth of dust from the floor. Zachary lurked in the doorway and occasionally stole boxes. Their mother shooed him away and took over planning the party, shooing Miriam away as well.</p><p>As Friday night loomed closer and Miriam’s nerves began to fray. She heard the wailing again. It got louder, and creaks and moans of the house accompanied it. The girls at school chatted about the party. Miriam started to run out of stories. She could only think of so many ways to tell a ghost story about hearing a few strange noises.</p><p>Friday comes and Jessica, Miriam’s new best friend, came to her house directly from school. Jessica stared at her feet, hiding behind her frizzy red hair as they walk. She hesitates before starting down the walk to the large house. Miriam introduces Jessica to her brother and mother. Jessica nods and smiles, she fails to pick up any of the threads of conversation her mother starts. Her eyes dart across the room.</p><p>Miriam could not take it anymore. Jessica looked as if she is going to melt into a quivering puddle of fear.</p><p>“You know, the house isn’t really haunted.” Miriam took a deep breath, “I exaggerated those stories I told.”</p><p>Jessica started to smile, “Exaggerated? But the house isn’t actually haunted, right?”</p><p>“It’s not!” Miriam assured her, “It makes weird noises sometimes, that’s all.”</p><p>Jessica’s smile looked a bit forced, but Miriam doesn’t push it. She got Jessica to help her arrange sleeping mats in the spare bedroom and prepare snacks. </p><p>The girls began to arrive. Miriam and her mother shepherded them to the spare room. She saw Zachary’s face lurking in one of the windows of the tower as she was greeting girls outside. He was the real ghost in the house.</p><p>Miriam’s mother kept them busy with Frisbee in the backyard and funny movies once it got dark. Late into the night the girls finally started to get tired. Once Jessica fell asleep on Miriam she herded them upstairs into the spare bedroom.</p><p>Miriam laid on the hard camping palette, staring at the ceiling. The girls around her whispered and giggled. She heard the wailing before anyone else did. A smile crept over her face as the voices in the room hushed and the mournful wailing rose. After it faded away the whispers rose again. Panic crackled across the room.</p><p>The soft sound of singing began to rise. Miriam pushed her face into her pillow to stifle her laughter. Soon everyone was wide awake and whispering to each other in the dark room.</p><p>Miriam sat upright when the suggestion to wake her up began to make its way around the room. “It’s probably just my mom, listening to her indie music,” she said in a groggy voice, laying back down.</p><p>“Are you sure?” someone asked.</p><p>Miriam rolled over to go back to sleep.</p><p>One of them opened the creaking door. Several girls padded down the hallway, the floorboards creaked with every step. The singing stopped.</p><p>“Miriam…” Jessica said, “I don’t think it was coming from your mom’s room.”</p><p>Miriam was dying a slow death from holding in laughter. She was glad the room was dark, and the girls could not see her red face.</p><p>“Maybe the TV was left on,” Miriam suggested once she composed herself. She exited the room and began to walk down the hallway to the stairs and the living room below.</p><p>The other girls began to follow her, and another wail sounded. It was much louder and much closer. No longer muffled by the house they could hear the voice behind the sound.</p><p>A shiver runs down Miriam’s spine. That did not sound like the house creaking. She pressed forward. Another quiet wail filled the air, and she felt the girls behind her panicking. Jessica screamed, shrill and piercing.Little footsteps thumped down the hallway in the direction of Miriam’s room.</p><p>“I saw it! I saw it!” Jessica ran in one direction while Miriam ran in the other. Miriam and a few of the braver girls followed the black streak up the tower staircase.</p><p>There was nothing in the top of the tower.</p><p>The party reached critical levels of panic. Miriam tried to usher everyone into the living room and calm them down. She searched in the dark for the TV remote. They had enough haunting for one night.</p><p>The wall of the living room split open and a figure in white robes with a black face emerged from the darkness. Jessica screamed so loud it hurt Miriam’s ears. She ran from the room and Miriam sat stunned as the rest of the girls followed. The front door was opened, as the girls fled to the waiting minivan at the curb.</p><p>Miriam’s mother stood in the gap in the wall, her mouth open in shock. The glow of electric light illuminated the stairs that descended behind her. She shut the panel of the wall, a thin door wallpapered like the rest of the room. She gathered herself together and cinched her white robe.</p><p>“Miriam, if I hear anymore screaming, the party is over. I’ll call their parents.” her mom scolded her without venom.</p><p> “And if you see your brother, tell him that cat he tried to smuggle into the basement has to go.”</p>
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